Saturday, March 4, 2017

4. CRY

Four cries that stay with me still:

1.I am small; small enough to think that my old feather pillow
with the dark blue tick cloth can hide me. Small enough that when I stand I can
rest my head against my mother’s soft belly, my arms stretched around her thighs,
and feel her gentle fingers run over my corn silk hair. Not small enough,
however, to offer her any of the comfort tiny babies give to their mothers,
that snuggle-down kind of comfort where baby breath gathers into the hollow of
the neck. Too big for innocence and ignorance. I lie there on my side, my twin
bed just feet away from my sister’s twin bed.
We face each other in silence, our eyes wide open, staring into each
other’s heartache as our mother weeps in the other room. Late into the night,
after Libby’s eyes have fluttered shut, I listen to my mother’s cries,
weakening into sputtered moans, muted by the doors and halls and years between us.
I pull my bony knees up to my chest, yearning to be hers again, to hold her
from the inside out. It’s a mournful cry that rises from a heart that must let
go of something it loves.

2. I am wholly aware of myself. For three days I have lived
in the center of a pulsing amoeba-like force that radiates all around me.
General discomfort points its long-nailed finger toward my belly, the creature
inside growing still and hard, then all energy focuses in from my protruding
belly button and begins to clamp down, like a vise on balsa wood. I breathe,
Lamaze style, my lips pursed into a tiny tube-like pipe which will only allow
molecules of air to release in a steady flow. Sweat drips into my eyes. When
the clamping releases I fall back into the stiff hospital pillow, closing my
eyes and hoping for a minute of reprieve before the next wave comes. I am weary
from the length of labor, yet determined to endure it without numbing the pain.
The love of my life stands beside me, allowing me to press my anguish into his
poor helpless hands. My body shakes with another rising cramp. The cramps come
closer and closer to each other, until a gush of water sends them rushing as they
wheel me into the delivery room. Finally the doctor tells me I can push.Over and over we work, my child and me;
pounding relentlessly.We work in sacred
silence.I am strangely conscious of my
desire to do this with dignity, to embrace the pain in some pseudo-religious
ordinance-like manner, sensing the divinity of the process. I am wholly aware
of myself and the spirit I have hosted. One deep breath, deep in the belly we
usually forget we have, and I hold it in, trying to release it with that baby
whose head has crowned. One silent, back crunching push, then the slip, and the
cry. His first breath of earthly air, drawn in desperation, and released in a
soul shivering cry, his presence known in the fibers of the Veil itself. I have
never felt more one with the heavens, with my husband, with my God, nor with
myself. That cry trumpeted my own birth as much as it signaled the birth of my
son.

3.We have gathered in a cluster of hope, our beautifully dysfunctional
enmeshed family, huddled there in the waiting room of the LDS Hospital ICU. For
eight days we have held vigil, praying that the swelling in Clayton’s brain
will go down. He is just eighteen-years-old, too young to drink, but old enough
to purchase a bullet bike motorcycle without his parent’s consent. His helmet
sits unopened on the counter at home, so when he laid the bike down to avoid a
head-on collision with the car that came unexpectedly around the corner, his
head took the brunt of the blow. Now he lies on a hospital bed, his beautifully
built body healing in those eight days, the road rash turning to scabs and
finally new flesh.How miraculously the
body heals itself.Except that his brain
will not let go of the fluid, no matter how hard we pray, how hard the medical
personnel tries. The monitors ignore the god-like beauty of his golden curls,
keeping their cruel numbers high. We take turns sleeping in our little
make-shift campground there in our self-claimed corner of the waiting room. One
by one the others patients who came in
with Clay either succumb to their injuries or are released to regular rooms. We
have grown so close so quickly with others who are living their crises that one
day we make a full Thanksgiving feast and bring it down for us all to be
nourished together. Later, the hospital will decide to no longer have couches
in the waiting room, to discourage people from staying overnight. Shame,
really, because there is comfort in shared sorrow.

Finally, on the eighth day, they take my brother George and
his wife Cyndy, Clayton’s parents, into a small room down the hall. A while
later they return and call us all together.We cluster around them, our arms intertwined.My brother tries to speak, but instead there
rises from him a deep, massive moan. From the depths of the earth it rolls, up through
his feet, past his loins and his tightened belly.It pauses in his chest and then squeezes out of
his throat as his head falls back, his shoulders rising and then falling as the
cry releases its full weight into the sterile hospital air, the pitch rising
slowly and sorrowfully until it runs out of air and his shoulders fall forward
into mournful sobs. It is such an agonizing sound I still hear it in present
tense.

Clayton’s beautiful, healthy, glorious body became the
source of life for many people the next day. There was little of him to bury. He
remains in the heart, the eyes, the skin and other healthy organs other people
carry around to this day. Sometimes I see a stranger on the streets of Salt
Lake City and wonder if perhaps they are partly our golden-haired boy,
unawares.

4. He stumbled back against the door of the fridge, his
right hand rising up to hold his head, his left hand holding the phone against
his ear. “No, Dad. No!” David slid down the wooden panel and ended in a heap on
the hardwood floor. His cry rose up gently and deeply, almost childlike. It
echoed in the empty space of our new house. They had finished the wood floors
while we were gone to Michigan for vacation. We had just left David’s mother at
the Saginaw airport. I can see her still, blowing kisses to her grandchildren
as we walked up the steps to the small plane. On the way home her car had
collided with another, causing massive head injuries which she did not survive.
When Kate heard the cry she ran up the stairs, into the small library, and
called her Gram, the one who still remained. “Something is wrong” she cried,
and before the words of his mother’s passing crossed David’s lips, Gram was
there to comfort us. It has been over twenty years now, but still, on dark
lonely nights, I can sometimes hear the echoes of his cry in the corners of
this house.

5 comments:

Oh man, I remember those last two ones. My first real memory of our "new" house was when we found out Grandma died...I think that may be why it took me so long to feel comfortable there. Of course I love it there now. Though, I still have a little bit of discomfort in that library still. It always reminds me of that day.

Oh my heart...this takes me back to moments when heaven was so close but so far away at the same time. Thank you sister for once again recording how our hearts felt in these life altering moments. I will never forget these...all of them. Thank you!!

Oh my heart...this takes me back to moments when heaven was so close but so far away at the same time. Thank you sister for once again recording how our hearts felt in these life altering moments. I will never forget these...all of them. Thank you!!

I wasn't with you for that first cry, but I've seen for decades that great bond you have always shared with your mother, whom I also love so dearly. We miss her so! There has never been anything as glorious as watching you give birth to our children. Neither of us could have ever dreamed of the intensity and joy of those moments. And the sadness of the last two is simply beyond words, although your beautiful words come as close as any human-crafted words can come to capturing those feelings. I know I would never have been able to endure that last one without you at my side.Thank you.